Unalaska, AK – After many delays and with much anticipation from the fishing industry, the National Marine Fisheries Service just released its draft biological opinion on Alaska's Steller sea lion population. The draft clocks in at over 800 pages of text, charts, and graphs, and it examines the effect of commercial fishing on this protected species. It also makes some recommendations that could limit fishing in a portion of the Aleutians.

The western stock of sea lions was listed as endangered in 1990, and every year NOAA scientists do surveys of the marine mammals to figure out how many are surviving and how many are breeding. And through most of the Aleutians, the numbers have stabilized. Except for out at the western tip. There, the adult population has declined almost by half in the past decade. It's this region that NMFS wants to target, as the BiOp lays out.

NMFS says that while the population is influenced by a number of factors, commercial fishing does have an impact on Steller sea lions and it negatively affects their habitat. John Warrenchuk is a scientist with the non-profit conservation group Oceana. He agrees with NMFS's assessment that competition for food is a serious problem for the sea lions.

"Steller sea lions need abundant fish, abundant prey near shore to be able to do well, and they're kind of the same boat as Alaskan fishing communities that need lots of fish near their communities to go out and catch," says Warrenchuk. "What we need to do is increase the biomass of pollock, of Pacific cod, and Atka Mackerel in near-shore areas in sea lions' critical habitat to make sure there's enough fish to go around.

And so NMFS is recommending a something called a "reasonable and prudent alternative," or an RPA. This would place some restrictions on fisheries in the Western Aleutians. The BiOp calls for the closure the Atka Mackerel and Pacific cod fisheries out near Attu, where the Steller sea lion population is most vulnerable. There would also be some limits on the ground fish fishery near the Andreanof Islands, but there restrictions wouldn't be as extreme.

Dave Benton is the head of the Marine Conservation Alliance, a fishery management organization, and he says that he's not sure these closures would necessarily be warranted.

"I'm really not convinced that the scientific underpinnings are there to extend fishery management measures beyond critical habitat," says Benton. "It seems to me that there's a pretty steep bar that needs to be climbed over to get to that place, and I just am very curious when we look analysis to see how they based their decision to do that."

He also says he's worried that NMFS is moving too quickly with the BiOp.

"This thing warrants a very careful scientific review and a very thoughtful public comment," says Benton. "And I don't see how we're going to be able to do that in the time-frame that NMFS has specified."

Meanwhile, Warrenchuk has his own reservations about the direction of the BiOp - but for different reasons.

"It's a step in the right direction, but it's not all the way there," says Warrenchuk. Overall in Alaska, we need to move toward a more a more ecosystem-based fisheries management, which includes accounting for the needs of the ecosystem and for other components that rely on fish including marine mammals and Steller sea lions."

The North Pacific Fishery Management council will be meeting from August 16 to August 20 to discuss the BiOp and figure out how they're going to move forward with the recommendation. NMFS will be accepting public comment on the BiOp until August 27. The final draft of the biological opinion on Steller sea lions is scheduled to be released in January.